


There and Back Again: A Tale of Two Sins

by LynnLarsh



Series: Love: The Eighth Deadly Sin [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BE WARY, Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Miscommunication, Really it goes from consensual to very much not and is handled accordingly, Shouldn't be confusing though, Still uncomfortable though, Vignettes of two different linear timelines overlapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 05:08:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16675081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynnLarsh/pseuds/LynnLarsh
Summary: Sometimes it takes a million mistakes and two hundred years, but everybody gets it right eventually.  Even Lust and Pride.





	There and Back Again: A Tale of Two Sins

**Author's Note:**

> So I didn't manage to get as many prompts done for October as I wanted... as in, literally only the three. But! I did promise I'd write a little something extra for whichever one got the most response. Thanks in large part to HardlyNotNever on tumblr, I'm sure (who drew me my first ever fanart and I'm still dYING) that fic ended up being One of the Seven Deadly Sins (Or Two) which will be part one of this two part series.
> 
> You don't technically have to read it first, I don't think--this one is decently stand alone--but I do recommend it. It adds a sense of understanding and weight to the present day vignettes.
> 
> Now on with the show.

Understanding comes to them in pieces.

They are an entity, breathing and existing and _writhing_ amidst a swarm of other bodies. They are touching, reaching, grasping, soaking in the humans’ pleasure as if it were their own. In fact, every gasp seems to leave their own lungs. Every moan seems to reverberate in their own chest. Every cry seems to crawl out of their own throat. They embody their senses, ache with their desperation for release.

Understanding comes to them in sparks and flashes and bursts of color. In moments of need and hunger and wanton _lust_.

Ah.

Understanding comes to them. To her? Hm, no. To _him_.

Lust drags himself to his feet, mindful of the bodies still engaged around him. He goes unnoticed, the humans’ single minded desire keeping them blind to his presence, a near palpable shroud surrounding them all that he soaks in with eager touches to his own skin. A human body, he realizes belatedly, one absorbed from some of the more lithe forms currently being unraveled by strong arms and rough hands. A Sin’s mind, he realizes as well, born from the potency of these humans’ incredible passion and animalistic need. A physical manifestation of their sheer, unbridled lust.

Before he can really give cause to the thought, Lust drapes himself over the naked back of a man currently buried to the hilt in a woman’s dripping need, her arousal overwhelming her to the point of senseless whimpering. The moment Lust touches the man’s skin, his muscles tense with a wash of renewed desperation, his thrusts increasing to a near frantic pace. The woman beneath him cries out in pleasure and Lust drinks it up like the most intoxicating of elixirs.

This is his purpose, he accepts with the ease of a very essence built upon the foundation of it. The siren song to stoke the fires of need, the bone deep demand to demand their release. It is the core of his very being, the singular focus of his very nature. 

And as his eyes flutter closed, aura stretching from body to body in shared bliss, he decides to revel in it.

\---

“You haven’t changed much, have you?” Lance remarks, mostly to himself, as he strolls lazily around the perimeter of Shiro’s fancy high rise apartment.

Shiro settles himself in a casual lean against the kitchen island and watches Lance with undeniable amusement. “How so?”

“Oh, you know,” Lance shrugs, running a single, perfectly manicured finger along the edge of a lavish, black leather sofa that just so happens to be sitting in front of an ostentatiously large flat-screen. “The high end suits, the expensive living arrangements—” He saunters over to the floor to ceiling windows that stretch along the entire east wall, view of the city laid out in sparkling panorama. Then he glances at Shiro from over his shoulder. “—the seven nightclubs.”

Shiro blinks at him for a moment before losing face, a laugh escaping him that settles warm and welcome into the center of Lance’s chest. Even if he hasn’t quite invited it to stay yet.

“You’ve got me there,” Shiro eventually manages to get out, the words laced with chuckles and yet still undeniably heated. The low rumble of his voice is so familiar it hurts. “I like to show off. Especially to those worth impressing.” As if to emphasize the point, Shiro finally pushes away from the island and makes to walk in Lance’s direction. An action Lance brings a a halt to at once with the sharp raise of a hand between them. Shiro lifts an eyebrow, expression a near indiscernible cocktail of confusion, intrigue, and understanding, but he makes no further move forward.

Satisfied with his modicum if control, at least for now, Lance lets his hand drop back to brace against his cocked hip.

“How about you give me an actual tour of the place, huh? What do you say?”

\---

The first time Lust meets another Sin it does not go well.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, considering the Sin’s embodiment was literal, volatile rage. Honestly, it wasn’t Lust’s fault that the cocktail of adrenalin and passion made for the perfect breeding ground. Men could be so easily distracted by arousal, even more so than by power or greed. And considering the way Lust’s involvement accidentally turned the tides of war, it showed itself to be a balm best used to soothe even hatred incarnate.

Even before dark, elegant hands are tangling in the collar of his uniform, Lust can tell he’s in the presence of another Sin. And even before he zeroes in on the fire burning behind those narrowed eyes, it’s not difficult to realize that the Sin (Wrath—the identity somehow resonates to his very core) is far from pleased.

Her full lips form a hard line, tension rippling through her shoulders and neck as she forces Lust bodily into the hard, stone wall. 

“Do you realize what your pathetic nature has done to my soldiers? To my _war_?” Her voice is venomous, laced with a fury that would force any man to his knees. Her face, however, is ethereal, contorted in rage and all the more beautiful for it. The hand that raises from Lust’s loose collar to his neck is steady and sure, bloodthirsty as it grasps, grips, and tightens between a shared exhale.

The reaction to Wrath’s touch is instant.

A rush of near uncontainable arousal bolts through him like a spike. It’s an arousal so unlike anything he’s experienced in his minimal existence, a pure and potent thing that seems to resonate on a purely foundational level. It’s his own, he understands, sagging beneath the weight of it. Every instance prior to this one had been fueled by those around them, if not created than enhanced by his presence. It had always been an after image, a taste on the air, a layer of sensation that could be removed as easily as a coat. But this? This is his and his alone, a heat boiling at his core that he can do nothing more than succumb to.

Distantly, mind hazy and vision swimming, Lust sees a similar recognition in Wrath’s fiery gaze. 

The now trembling hand around his throat tightens.

Lust knows less about dying than he does about the manner and reason in which he was born, but if he were to bet his life on anything, it would be in the high probability that another Sin could end it.

And yet.

There is nothing more Lust desires to do in that moment than raise a hand in a loose grip around Wrath’s wrist, pant out what little breath he can manage, and whimper a choked, “Please.”

As if the word breaks some sort of spell, Wrath growls in response, wrenching her hand away. It leaves Lust so dizzy and stunned that he doesn’t even realize he’s fallen to his knees until Wrath is kneeling on the floor in front of him, shoving into his personal space and forcing Lust to recapture her gaze.

“Keep your filthy persuasions out of my _fucking_ war,” she says through her teeth, jabbing a finger into his chest. Lust shudders at even that little bit of contact, his whole body still thrumming, mind still flailing amidst the loss of so much sensation. As Wrath gets back to her feet, armor clanking in a way that should not be so abrasive to his inhuman ears, Lust struggles with the demand to call her back. As she turns her back on his hunched and pathetic form, he has to will himself not to follow, no matter how much he wants, no matter how much he _needs_.

And not just for release, but for answers.

He sleeps his way through eighty-two of Wrath’s soldiers before he feels steady enough to leave her territory.

\---

Lance doesn’t mean to cave so quickly, he really doesn’t, but now that Shiro is within arm’s reach it’s just… really hard to keep his hands to himself. Which is why, as the half assed nickel tour comes to a close with Shiro’s bedroom, Lance doesn’t blame himself too harshly for the way he settles on the edge of the bed and motions to the place at his side, beckoning.

Shiro follows without hesitation.

For a long moment, neither of them say a word. In fact, now that he’s here, Lance doesn’t even know where to begin. It’s been so long, but also nowhere near long enough to forget. And yet, all it had taken were those few simple but powerful moments in the nightclub for his essence to cry out to Pride’s, for his body and soul and mind to give in like none of it had ever happened.

But it had. So _much_ had happened, and they couldn’t afford to ignore it this time.

That being said, a couple more minutes of silence wouldn’t hurt, right? Lance has earned that much at least, hasn’t he?

So before either of them can address the elephant in the room (as much as they know they should) Lance angles his body towards Shiro, reaches out to cup his cheek, and guides him into a soft and silent kiss.

\---

It takes meeting two more Sins and traveling through twice as many lands before Lust finally learns.

An instance with Gluttony that leaves him disoriented and aching and somehow, incredibly, with a newfound confidant and friend. An unresolved tension with Greed that leaves him riled up and desperate and fighting his way out of her “cordial” attempts at “indefinite hospitality” by fleeing to a faraway country amidst the courtesans of a traveling brothel.

What he learns is this: 

Being around humans elicits his purpose, brings out the natural desire to pleasure and arouse and soak in their release like fuel, like energy. 

Being around other Sins elicits his _nature_. Proximity alone makes him sweat and yearn, even minimal interactions make him hungry. And touch? Physical connection for even just a breath of an instance? That leaves him all but drowning in the ocean of his own arousal. No matter the Sin, he becomes eager and wanting and submissive. No matter the Sin, he becomes a desperate and willing slut.

So he vows to do what must be done in order to keep a firm grasp on his control. He avoids every last one of them.

\---

The kiss is chaste at first, filled with a meaning neither of them seem capable of dissecting. But as it is with Lance’s nature (or maybe, just as it is with _them_ ) it doesn’t stay chaste for long.

It’s unclear who makes the first move away from soft and sweet and intimate into something desperate and rushed and hungry, but all at once, Lance’s hands are clawing at the tight, black fabric of Shiro’s shirt in a frantic attempt to get it over his head. Shiro responds in kind, removing Lance’s halter in one sharp and firm tug, the thin straps of fabric along his back giving way like nothing more than loose thread.

Another tug and Lance is on Shiro’s lap.

“Lance…” Shiro is talking to him, asking him something, but he can hardly hear it beneath the dark and devastating rumble of his voice.

The words, “Are you sure?” and, “Maybe we should talk first,” are probably in there somewhere.

But it’s been a while since Lance has felt this keyed up, heart hammering against his ribs as an ache begins to grow from hot to boiling inside of him. It makes it hard to think past the haze of _more, please, Shiro, Pride, yes, yes, more_. And Shiro’s right, of course he’s right, but it’s because of this more than anything that has Lance latching on to the last vestiges of his control and placing a gentle but adamant hand against Shiro’s bare chest, not pushing so much as stalling.

“I’m sorry,” Lance pants against the centimeter of space between their mouths. “I know I’m… I know I’m being confusing, I just--”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore; being this close to Shiro is like being deep,deep underwater and trying not to drown, a singular focus the only thing still keeping him alive. 

It takes the feel of Shiro’s hand against the back of his neck, the barely there sensation of a thumb tracing small patterns against his cheekbone, for Lance to realize he’d been near to panic. He focuses on the small ministrations, willing his heart to slow and the whir of his mind to calm.

“It’s all right,” Shiro whispers, lips still close enough that Lance can feel the words more than hear them. And even though the hard and eager press of Shiro’s arousal between them should make the comment contradictory, Lance believes him. Regardless of everything still hanging over their heads, Lance has somehow never stopped trusting him. Not really.

“I just,” Shiro whispers, pulling Lance flush against him in what can only be described as a loving embrace. “I don’t want you to think this is like last time. I don’t want you to think I don’t…”

Something that had still been fractured deep in Lance’s heart finally begins to mend. Lance hugs him back.

“I know.”

\---

It’s takes nearly a century before Lust stumbles upon another Sin again.

It’s a complete accident, one that he thoroughly scolds himself for after the fact. 

In the moment though, he can’t find it in himself to complain. Especially as the Sin’s eyes catch on him from across the crowded speakeasy. They’re a dark, steely gray that alight with mischief the moment Lust is spotted; it’s obvious at once that this Sin knows what he is. Lust isn’t even given a chance to hide or flee, the Sin leaving his place of importance amongst the upper crust of the party and b-lining across the room in Lust’s direction.

With every step closer, Lust’s heart beats faster, hand tightening on the stem of his martini glass almost enough to splinter. He feels hot beneath the collar of his suit, the sounds of the jazz band fading into white noise as the body of a dapper and rather exquisite Sin stops to loom over him. 

But after nearly three centuries of existence and contemplation, Lust has learned how to hide his involuntary desires. He’s learned to force his control to the surface, to _will_ it. Even in the face of the most oppressive (and beautiful, so so beautiful) Sin he’s ever met.

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say you’re not from around here,” the Sin (name still unknown to him somehow) smirks, placing himself directly into Lust’s personal space with just as much intent as the drag of his eyes down Lust’s body. To any outsider, he could be commenting on Lust’s brown skin and piercing blue eyes, possibly even the rather sinful dark red of his sinfully tailored suit.

But Lust knows that’s not what he means.

“And if I’m _not_ from around here?” Lust smirks right back, placing a hand on one slender hip as the other raises the martini to his lips. The remnants of gin and vermouth are still on his tongue as he asks, “Would that be a problem, Mr…?” He waits, looking up at the Sin’s chiseled jawline and knowing smile from beneath long, dark lashes. An amused breath escapes past soft looking lips, the two of them close enough for Lust to feel a puff of warm air against his cheeks.

“The capo call me Champion,” he says, his nature basically preening beneath the word. Whatever it means to these American mobsters, it seems to illicit a very _sinful_ reaction, especially when mention of the title has the patrons loitering around murmuring in their own awe. Something dark settles beneath Lust’s breastbone that momentarily battles with his now constant state of thrumming desire.

“Champion doesn’t seem like a very good name for screaming,” Lust tuts, raising the martini between their faces and soaking in the Sin’s hungry gaze from over the rim. “Surely you have a name more suited for a night crying out in passion.”

The reaction to those words is instant, the Sin’s eyes flashing with a heat only bolstered by Lust’s siren call. In exchange, Lust feels a thrum of his own smug pride at having caused it. 

Surely their very essences are palpable around them both at this point, but aside from a suddenly more intimate gathering, no one seems to notice anything astray. At least, not until Lust raises the martini glass to his lips only to have the Sin’s hand cover his own, stopping it midway. And ah. There it is. A wash of desire so fierce Lust forgets how to breathe. 

“Most of my friends know me as Kuro,” he says just above a rumbling whisper. Then, as he leans in, lips brushing the shell of Lust’s ear, he adds in a heated breath, “But you can call me Pride.”

Just like every other experience with Sins, Lust feels his entire body and soul reach out, demanding pleasure, begging for attention. The ache between his legs leaves him wobbly and the heat melting at his very core threatens to consume him. And yet somehow, he still feels in control, as if this wash of arousal is less frightening and more thrilling, enticing. As if his nature is as eager as his body is to finally see this one through. 

Perhaps he’s getting old.

Or perhaps it’s because Pride does not consume him then and there as the other Sins might have, especially as willing as he can feel himself portraying. Perhaps instead it is because Pride does nothing more than step back enough to kiss Lust’s hand before letting go completely.

“And what should I be calling you?” He asks, a devilish glint in his eye, and even with the haze lifting now that contact has been broken, Lust still can’t seem to remember how to speak. After draining the rest of his martini and passing it off to one of the meandering waitstaff, it becomes a bit easier.

“Leandro,” he says at last, wondering suddenly why his face feels flush even as the ache within him lessens. “But I’m sure you can think of something else to call me, hm?” He leans in, careful not to touch, only to gently caress the lapel of Pride’s dark purple suit. “Kitten maybe? Or sweetheart?” He puts on his most seductive expression and leans in. “How about _baby_?”

At this, Pride chuckles, a warm sound of amusement that Lust involuntarily frowns at, backing away. Before he can bristle further however, affronted argument already on the tip of his tongue, Pride takes a step back into his space and wraps an arm around his waist. Despite the lack of actual skin on skin contact, Lust can’t help the full body shudder that wracks him. And the soft gasp of embarrassment and arousal when he realizes Pride must have felt it.

“You really are as stunningly you as the rumors say, aren’t you,” Pride hums, smile still amused even as his eyes remain hungry. 

Lust blinks, having trouble following again. But even so, he finds he doesn’t want to force himself out of the confines of Pride’s strong arms just yet. 

“Excuse me?” He still wills his mouth to move, however, mostly out of spite. Pride chuckles.

“Lust,” he says, and the sound of his name in Pride’s voice (the first Sin to ever use his name at all, let alone in so sultry a manner) makes his knees go week. Pride holds him up with ease. Then he says, low and dark, “I’ve heard things about you I couldn’t hope to believe. About your beauty, your energy, your… _sway_. It’s been a particular goal of mine to meet you one day, you know. Imagine my luck when I saw you walk in tonight looking like a billboard in time square announcing to me exactly who you are. _What_ you are.” It’s not until Pride licks his lips and Lust practically _feels_ it against his own that he realizes how closely they’ve gravitated towards each other.

“I didn’t come here for you,” Lust hears himself say on half second delay, as if it’s something else deep, deep inside him that demands for Pride to know. 

And despite the way it seems to completely blind side them both, Pride whispers a soft, “I know,” before covering that last centimeter of distance between their lips.

In a distant and vague part of his mind, Lust hears scandalized gasps (this is 1920’s America after all) made only less aggressive by the sheer force of their mingled essences in the air; Lust’s essence feels to be damn near suffocating all on its own.

What Lust had thought was a wave of sensation at a mere brush of contact was now a deluge, the feeling of kissing another Sin for the first time taking the flicker of flame within him and turning it into a raging inferno. And having that Sin be Pride, having that sense of gratification and satisfaction (a pleasure so different from his own) caressing his mind and body, is nearly too much to comprehend.

The kiss could have lasted eons and Lust still would have lamented the moment it broke.

The sensation of Pride pulling away after only just giving Lust a taste is like being on the brink of climax only to have the orgasm fiercely denied. It leaves him panting and unsatisfied, but also oddly keyed up, a sort of underlying anticipation lingering beneath his skin. 

Keeping him waiting for more.

It’s such a drastic shift from his usual interaction with other Sins that Lust doesn’t quite know how to process what’s happening, the desire to flee in the face of possible intimacy suddenly replaced with the unspoken plea for its expedience. He wants to stay in Pride’s arms, wants Pride to take him somewhere, anywhere, and make him forget his own existence. He wants Pride to wreck him.

But… But where it’s normally unconscious, his nature merely pulled like a magnetic force towards brethren souls, this yearning is different. This yearning feels voluntary. This desire feels like a choice.

So Lust bites the bullet and _chooses_.

For the first time, Lust reaches out willingly towards another Sin, delicate fingers brushing feather light against the stubble that lines Pride’s jaw. His hand settles on the back of Pride’s neck, fingernails scratching against the short hair at the nape of his neck, and Lust revels in the way Pride’s eyes flutter closed at the initiated contact.

“What do you say, Pride?” Lust purrs, letting his free hand roam the soft material of the dress shirt stretched over Pride’s broad chest. “Think it’s about time you took me home?”

\---

They’re handling this the wrong way, Lance realizes with a groan.

“All right. All right, just… hold on a second.” He buries his face in the juncture between Shiro’s neck and shoulder for a moment, just breathing in his scent, allowing himself to soak in the memories of strong arms around him, a comforting weight against his back as they slept. Slowly but surely, be begins to pick out the old, affectionate intimacies from beneath the familiar persistence of his own arousal.

When he thinks he’s got a better handle on things, he pops his head up with a sharp exhale and a firm nod. And perhaps his face is just serious enough for Shrio to bite his tongue, but Lance swears the Sin is trying not to laugh at him.

“Scoot back for a second, yeah? Like, just… lay down. Or prop yourself up on the pillows.” Lance pulls away to give Shiro room, ignoring the shiver that runs down his back at the jostling motion. “Yeah, like that. But make room for me too, okay? Like-- Perfect.”

With a nod at the display before him (Shiro sitting against the headrest, legs slightly spread and half naked body open to him) Lance crawls into the space provided and settles his back against Shiro’s chest.

“There.”

\---

Lust isn’t sure whether Sins are meant to be together in the way he finds himself with Pride, tangled in bedsheets, naked and writhing like humans, but he isn’t exactly complaining. It’s unlike any intimate touch he’s ever experienced, the feel of Pride’s mouth anywhere on his body like a brand sizzling into his skin. 

They’d barely made it into the loft above the speakeasy before Lust was tearing at Pride’s suit with the same single minded intent as Pride seemed to be making with the hickies along Lust’s throat. They would fade almost instantly, but it didn’t matter; being marked by another Sin--no, not by just another Sin, by _Pride_ \--left Lust breathless and practically whimpering with need.

Needless to say, the transition from clothed to bare and entangled was a footnote all but forgotten.

Now, Lust spreads himself out beneath Pride’s wandering touches, bucks up into the insistent grind of skin on skin. Every time he gets close, Pride changes paths, lips and fingers and teeth and hands traveling to untouched skin until he’s begging once more.

“P-Pride, please…” Lust whimpers, head thrashing against the pillow as fingers open him up with an ease that should only come with familiarity, as if Lust’s body knows something he doesn’t. 

Pride hums as his fingers stretch and scissor, glancing over parts within him that have Lust shamelessly crying out. Through the haze of his own overwhelming arousal, he can see the hunger in Pride’s eyes, hear the growl in his voice when he says, “I’ve got you, baby.”

And Lust is undone, body clenching around Pride’s fingers and back bowing off the bed as a pleasure he never thought possible wracks through to his very soul. His nature preens, his essence sings, and as Pride sinks into him, he swears he blips out of existence entirely.

It’s in the moment before Lust succumbs to his own ecstacy once more, when Pride is buried as deep within him as he can, that something unexpected happens.

It’s been second nature to feel out other Sins’ essences, to let them wander his skin and mind like the curious touch of a stray cat. But in the seconds leading up to Pride’s release, Lust feels his own essence spread and coil around them both, their very souls reworking together into something different and new. He can feel Pride’s nature like a counterpart to his own, a bone deep need for mental satisfaction clicking into place alongside Lust’s need for the physical.

It’s a shift that’s as sudden as it is all encompassing, and when Pride finally comes, he drags Lust back over the edge with him.

\---

“All right,” Shiro chuckles softly, the sound vibrating between their bodies with a pleasant thrum. Lance soaks it in gladly, especially as Shiro tightens his arms around him from behind and rests a chin on his shoulder. “What now?”

“I haven’t gotten that far,” Lance admits, grateful that Shiro can’t see the blush spreading across his face from this angle. “Just no sex. At least not yet.”

Shiro hums, shifting into a more comfortable position with a content sigh. “That’s fine. I’m certainly not complaining about this.” Lance’s flush spreads, especially when Shiro murmurs into the hollow behind his ear, “Just having you here like this… it’s all I ever wanted.”

The genuine fondness in those words makes Lance’s heart melt and eyes sting, even as old wounds slowly reopen.

“Then why… last time, why did you act like, like you only wanted…” he can’t get the words out. Thankfully he doesn’t have to; Shiro knows.

“Because you left.”

\---

The first time it happens is nearly two decades later. Lust doesn’t handle it well.

The two Sins are lounging, naked and sated, afterglow settling over them as rich and comforting as the fancy silk sheets pooled around Lust’s waist. His arm is slung across Pride’s chest, head nestled in his shoulder, when he feels it.

Arousal and desire have always been a constant presence for Lust; it’s in his very framework, nestled so deep into his being that he can’t imagine what it would feel like to go without it. Except right now, the realization sets in, that he _can_.

He can, because in this moment, wrapped up in Pride’s arms, he has no desire for physical intimacy at all. In fact, on the contrary. All he seems to want is for Pride to hold him, for the two of them to stay in bed for the rest of eternity, talking and laughing and doing nothing physical at all and--

Lust shoots up in bed, heart pounding. His nature, his essence... It’s _gone_.

“Pride?” Lust tries to wake the other Sin without causing too much distress, but his voice his squeaky with panic. Pride startles into awareness at once.

“Lust? What-?”

Lust straddles him before he can get another word out, diving in for a rough and messy kiss. Pride responds the way he always does, groaning in the back of his throat and rolling his hips, already half hard. But Lust _isn’t_. In fact, as he continues to grind against him, panting into Pride’s mouth (more out of rising panic than anything) he begins to feel less and _less_ aroused.

Pride must notice something amiss, either in their still thoroughly bonded essences or just in the negative tension thrumming throughout Lust’s body, because he pulls back with a worried crease to his brow. Even as he chuckles softly and says, “What’s gotten into you, baby?” his growing concern is obvious.

And Lust can do nothing to assuage it.

Especially because, for the first time in his decade with Pride by his side, he starts feeling that crawling fear begin to spread across his chest. A fear which solidifies into full blown fight or flight the moment Pride’s eyes go wide and vulnerable. Lust reacts purely on instinct, scrambling out of the bed and towards the closet, throwing on the first pair of moderately matched trousers and dress shirt that he sees. 

“What…? Lust, wait. What are you doing?” Pride asks to Lust’s back sounding timid and scared and just as vulnerable as his eyes had been and--

And Lust wants nothing more than to crawl back into that bed and hold him tight and comfort him and do everything that _isn’t him_. His nature is built in infatuation and passion and physical satisfaction, not vulnerability and non-sexual intimacy and… and--

“I’ve got to go,” Lust says suddenly, not even bothering to tie his shoes before hurrying to the door.

“Go?” Pride chokes out, a pathetic and _shameless_ sound. “Go where? What’s going on?”

“I just need to get out of here for a while, that’s all,” Lust tries, but the tremor in his voice surely betrays him. He makes sure to keep looking forward, away from Pride and the lost, betrayed look on his face in the hopes that it’ll be easier to escape. It isn’t.

“I don’t understand,” Pride whispers and the brittle, shattering heartbreak in those three words is nearly enough to stop Lust in his tracks. His voice is closer now, the heat of him a near tangible presence against Lust’s back, tempting in all the wrong ways. “What’s all this about? Where do you need to go all of a sudden?” 

It’s obvious that Pride doesn’t understand, that he’s not feeling what Lust is feeling. Or perhaps just hasn’t realized it yet, because as a shaking hand reaches out to grip at Lust’s bicep, forcing him around, the look on his face is that of someone who isn’t too proud to grovel.

“Please,” he whispers, eyes shining and bottom lip trembling beneath labored breaths. “Just tell me what I did wrong and we can fix it.”

And Lust realizes with an even more terrifying start that he _does_ want to fix this. He _does_ want to stay, but the thought is fleeting, beaten to death by one simple, confusing fact.

“I don’t know what I am if I’m not _me_ , Pride...” He says the words out loud unintentionally, and Pride’s brow furrows in bewilderment, eyes still wild with panic.

“What are you--?” He tries, but Lust just rips his arm out of Pride’s grasp, the both of them stumbling a step away from each other.

“Something’s wrong. The two of us together is making us… not right. It’s making us _not us_.”

For a long moment, Pride just stares back in silent reply, but then, as if refusing to believe the words, he vehemently shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, but… but we can make it work. We can figure it out _together_ , so just don’t--”

“Pride!” Lust shouts, pulling the Sin up short. He forces himself to hold Pride’s wide (heartbroken, shameless, vulnerable) eyes as he says, deadpan and probably cruel, “You’re begging.”

Lust isn’t sure if the meaning entirely registers and he doesn’t wait to find out. Instead, he takes Pride’s moment of shock as his opportunity to finally escape.

Like the coward he is.

\---

The edges of the doorframe have started to blur with Lance’s steadfast determination to stare straight ahead. Also the beginnings of tears… that’s probably blurring his vision too. Because as much as their last interaction had killed him, left him wallowing and in agony and eventually accepting of his loss (a bit vindictively if he’s being honest) he couldn’t exactly deny that he was to blame for a lot of what had happened. If not all of it.

He just… He hadn’t known.

“I didn’t realize what it meant,” he eventually manages to get out, throat tight. His voice sounds raw and used, and not in the fun way. In fact, more than anything else, he just sounds tired and worn out. But if Shiro was being serious, if they’re going to try this again (whatever that means) then he needs to get this out.

They both need to get _everything_ out in the open this time. No assumptions and no running away.

“I didn’t realize that it meant that I loved you.”

\---

All it takes is six months before Lust realizes his mistake.

The more he separates himself from Pride the more his nature settles back into his mind and heart. But every human he lays with feels like an echo of what he had, a hollow and unsatisfying alternative. And when he finds himself face to face with another Sin a few months down the road, the original wash of involuntary arousal returns.

It just makes him feel sick, his heart fracturing and stomach roiling at the mere thought. So he runs again, just like before and just like always.

Except.

Except after those six months, after the panic has faded and those nights of distraction have turned numb and sickening, he starts to wonder.

Lust’s very nature is his namesake, it’s who he is as a Sin. But does that mean it’s who he is as a lover? Or as a mate, a bonded pair? Is that what he and Pride had been? And if so, had his childish and panic-induced decision ruined that for them both?

It takes running into Wrath again for Lust to finally have his answer.

“You were foolish back then, Lust,” she says, looking like the humans’ goddess Athena in her bright red ball gown, long silver hair falling in perfect waves over her dark brown shoulders. The head of MI6 now, apparently. “Naive to be so open with your nature.”

“I didn’t know that I had been,” Lust admits, hunching even further into the plush couch within her private office. Wrath smirks.

“Like I said. Foolish.” Then, with a breath, she asks him a question that shifts Lust’s entire mindscape. “And yet, with as open and willing as you’d been, what do you think kept me from dragging you back to my tent and having my way with you?”

Lust’s gut reaction is to be snarky, but he stays quiet, merely shrugging and letting his eyes fall into his lap. Wrath hums as if expecting that reaction.

“It’s because I’m bonded with Sloth.”

Sloth… A Sin that Lust has never met, one who keeps to themselves enough that their very existence is a rumor. But as Wrath says it, Lust instantly knows it to be true.

So instead of asking about them, wondering at how they met or what it means for them to be together, he just whispers softly, sadly, “What does it mean… to be bonded?”

When Wrath doesn’t answer right away, Lust forces himself to look up, shrinking away from the chastising look in Wrath’s eyes.

“I think you know what it means.”

Lust wants to argue with her, he really really does, but even after months, the feeling of being in Pride’s arms, no hint of arousal, only pure and open and vulnerable love keeps him silent. 

At least for a moment. Then he asks, “What does it mean for _you_?”

Wrath considers it for a moment, not as if they don’t know what he means but rather as if deciding what exactly to admit. In the end, she smiles at him, grin feral even as her eyes sparkle with fondness.

“They make me laugh.”

\---

The silent tension is broken this time not with a word or seductive intent, but with a single kiss pressed to the underside of Lance’s jaw. Lance freezes for a moment before melting beneath it, chest nearly heaving beneath the attempt to hold back his rising emotions.

“I thought you’d had your fill of me.” Shiro’s words drag across his jaw, his neck, lips leaving a trail of barely there kisses between every handful of words. “I thought you’d decided it wasn’t worth your nature.”

“I thought being with you meant losing who I was. What made me who I am.”

Suddenly, Lance needs to see Shiro’s face. Suddenly, more than anything, he needs to look him in the eyes and feel his essence seep deep into Lance’s being, a shot of morphine to his very soul. So, before he goes on, he carefully turns himself around in Shiro’s lap and captures his gaze.

“I was scared,” he says in a broken whisper, hoping Shiro can see the truth of that statement in his eyes. If Shiro didn’t believe his next words, it might literally kill him. “Once I realized what I’d done, I needed to find you. I came back because I needed you to know that I loved you, that I’d figured it out. But when you didn’t… After you… I thought I might have been wrong. I had to convince myself I _was_ wrong. Because if I wasn’t, then that meant it was my fault. It meant that I might have had… That I might have _ruined_ —”

“Hey, shh, hey…” Shiro is suddenly pulling Lance’s face into his chest, cradling the back of his head as he cards fingers soothingly through his hair. _Comforting_ him. The tears Lance has been trying desperately to hold back start falling. “That’s enough. It’s all right.”

It doesn’t seem all right, but Shiro’s voice is so certain, calming in a way that nothing else in his already long, long life ever has been. 

“Besides. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me.”

The comment is so shocking, so contradictory to what he’s expecting, that Lance can only jolt backwards, eyes wide and wet.

“Are you serious?” He practically squeaks, part incredulous and part horrified. “How can you possibly think—”

In an unexpected act of interruption, Shiro’s lips are back on his, not so much demanding silence as he is soothing Lance’s potential a meltdown. And it works, Lance’s frayed nerves settling enough for him to allow the kiss to ease some tension out of his muscles. 

It's not until then that Shiro pulls away, smiles, and says, “I should have told you I loved you so much sooner.”

\---

Lust finally manages to track down Pride a little under a year later. He’s made a name for himself as the head of a Japanese tech industry, his new face posted on every billboard in Tokyo. His jawline is a bit rounder, golden flecks in brown eyes instead of steely grey, but Lust would recognize him anywhere; his beauty transcends the physical for Lust anyway. All he cares about is that familiar, magnetic pull that tugs him around the edges of the award ceremony and into the shadows backstage. As close as he can be in public but not nearly close enough.

It’s obvious to see in his posture and speech the moment Pride becomes aware of his presence. At first, Lust tries to bite back the smug sense of triumph, but he chooses to revel in it instead, knowing it comes from the remnants of their shared bond. Perhaps Pride’s essence still remembers him as much as his does. He thinks it does, considering the way Pride hurries to finish his speech, seemingly ready to vibrate out of his skin as he waits for the applause to die down enough for his departure off stage to be amicable.

Except, once he’s off stage, he doesn’t crowd into Lust’s space and kiss him breathless like Lust expects. Instead, he walks past Lust with a soft, “Follow me,” before continuing out of the hotel ballroom and into the hotel proper.

Lust follows a few steps behind, wondering at Japanese propriety, until they two of them are alone in the elevator heading up towards Pride’s penthouse suit.

“Pride,” Lust whispers, turning to look at the Sin in question (his bonded, Lust finally allows himself to embrace) with apologies on the tip of his tongue. Apologies that go unheard for the way Pride is suddenly smothering Lust’s mouth with his own.

With a gasp of surprise and a moan of relief, Lust melts into it. It feels like breathing again, like being whole after years left empty and wanting. It feels like coming home.

Then the elevator opens and Pride steps away, leaving Lust reeling even as he follows blindly behind.

He allows Pride to lead him all the way to the bedroom before he stops, standing in the entryway and watching as Pride slowly begins to remove his jacket, undo his tie. At one point, he tries whispering Pride’s name again, but it’s met with silence, the Sin continuing to undress until he’s standing naked at the center of the room.

Then, without much warning, he holds a hand out for Lust to join him.

Lust swallows, heart pounding around Pride in a way it hasn’t since the first time they met. He knows without being asked (perhaps it’s their essences once again intertwining) that Pride wants him to strip. So he does so without hesitation, stepping into Pride’s reach the moment his boxers pool on the floor with the rest of his clothes.

“Pride…” Lust whispers again, as if the name is now his mantra, and Pride wraps an arm around his waist, still silent, but staring into Lust’s eyes with something he hopes is fondness. Maybe even love.

This time, when Pride kisses him, he gives back as much as he gets. It’s a heated and messy thing, too much teeth and tongue to even be called a kiss, but it’s everything Lust has been missing, everything he’s been _needing_. Pride growls in the back of his throat like he remembers, scratches burning lines of red into his back like he remembers, drags them tumbling into the bed in a tangle of limbs like he remembers.

It’s like he never left, his heart soaring with the idea that maybe, just maybe, Pride has already forgiven him. Maybe he understands and feels the same.

It’s in following this thought that Lust finds himself nestled between Pride’s thighs.

It’s a familiar and welcome sensation, swallowing Pride down to the hilt, feeling muscles tense beneath his hands and hips buck just slightly into the warmth and wetness of his mouth. Even the way Pride reaches to tangle his fingers in Lust’s cropped, dark hair makes him moan around the length in blissful memory of some of their more frantic encounters. Public moments of indecency, private moments of hurried bliss.

What is unfamiliar, however, is the way Pride shudders and comes undone beneath those ministrations without a single sound, no term of endearment as Lust swallows around him, and no gentle scratching of fingernails along Lust’s sensitive scalp.

When Pride inches away and pulls Lust unceremoniously back into the bed, he almost isn’t even surprised. His movements are emotionless, mechanical, and the look on his face is distant, enough so that when he reaches for the nightstand, digging in a drawer for some lube, Lust feels his heart stutter, ice filling his veins. Something isn’t…

This isn’t right.

“W-Wait,” Lust tries, even though his voice is still raw from before, wrecked both from mounting concern and lingering arousal. “Hold on.”

Pride ignores him, and for the first time since he was a young Sin avoiding all others like the plague, Lust looks into Pride’s face and feels fear.

“Pride, stop,” he squeaks, trying to wiggle out from beneath Pride’s body, but Pride’s always fancied bigger, more muscle-bound statures where Lust has always been prone to more lean, lithe frames. If Pride insisted upon this, Lust wouldn’t be able to get away. He’d be trapped. “Please, Pride, just--”

“Just what?” Pride speaks directly to him at last, his voice dark and undeniably cold. Practically unrecognizable. Lust’s heart breaks. “Isn’t this what you came here for?” Even as he speaks, slick fingers work messy circles onto his inner thigh, not inside him yet, but close enough to make a point. “Couldn’t find any other Sins to fuck so you come crawling back to me?”

All at once, Lust feels his throat tighten and his eyes fill with fierce, burning tears. When he shakes his head, desperate and aching in all the wrong ways, the tears fall in scattered streaks down his tan cheeks. “That’s not--”

“Oh no?” Pride raises an eyebrow at him, smirk bordering on taunting. “Then what are you doing here? You said this is all you know how to be, right? So then…” Pride trails off, hand inching further between Lust’s legs, and Lust crumbles, chest shuddering with a broken sob as he kicks a leg out in Pride’s direction. It connects dead on with his shoulder, and while it doesn’t seem to hurt him in the slightest, it does have Pride pulling back in surprise.

Lust can’t breathe, throat too constricted, chest too tight. This was a mistake. He’d been foolish and naive again, just like Wrath had said.

So, before Pride can recover from his shock, Lust bolts from the bed, scrambling to put on his clothes as quickly as possible before Pride tries to stop him. It feels like deja vu, only so, so much worse.

It’s not until Lust has managed everything but his shoes that Pride finally breaks the silence.

“Lust.”

It’s only his name, barely a whisper of sound, but it wracks through him like a bolt of electricity, makes him shudder with need as much as it makes him want to start crying all over again. But he won’t give Pride the satisfaction. Not anymore.

“This was a mistake,” he repeats aloud, shoving his arms into his jacket and taking a step towards the door. Only to pause, like his body (his essence still crying out for a memory they both can never hope to get back) refuses to leave without closure. Not again.

So, steeling his heart and willing his voice steady, he turns around and looks Pride dead in the eye.

“I just came here to apologize. For before. I didn’t realize what it meant. What feeling that way _meant_.” He takes a breath, lets it out, and keeps going. “I shouldn’t have run away. I should have stayed. So I’m sorry.”

And then, eyes welling with fresh tears he does everything in his power not to let fall, he whispers, “I didn’t realize I loved you until it was too late.”

When Lust walks out of the bedroom, Pride doesn’t call him back. When he leaves the hotel entirely, Pride doesn’t follow.

And when he does his best to vanish once more, Pride doesn’t bother trying to find him.

\---

“Say it again.”

The request is so filled with emotion it doesn’t even sound like words anymore. But lucky for Lance, Shiro understands.

“I love you.”

“But I thought… I didn’t…” Lance’s chest feels full to bursting, simultaneously thrilled and flabbergasted. “How long?”

If Lance wasn’t still staring far too closely at Shiro’s face, he probably would have missed the faint blush that blossoms across his cheeks at the question. What would have been impossible to miss, however, is the way Shiro glances to the side in embarrassment, clearing his throat.

“Since the Camorra?”

“The Camorra…” He knows it probably looks severely unattractive (especially paired with tear stained cheeks and puffy, red eyes) but he can do little more than openly gawk. “Shiro, that was during the Great Depression.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d only been together for what? Five years?”

“Just about.”

“But that’s not… that’s like… that’s like barely a week for beings like us! How could you possibly have _known_?”

Here, Shiro sighs, as if the answer is one he knows he’s going to regret voicing aloud. “You convinced two members of the Lucchese family to have a threesome with the head of the Gambino family and then stole his Bugatti.”

For a long moment, too long probably, Lance just blinks in response. That… wasn’t what he was expecting. Which is why, when his brain reboots and finally catches up to Shiro’s statement, all he can manage to do is throw his head back and laugh. Loud and boisterous and deep in a why he hasn’t laughed for a long, long time.

“I never knew threesomes and theft did it for you, Pride,” Lance purrs, though the effect is drastically ineffective while underscored by involuntary giggles. Shiro’s blush is a bright red now and stretching all the way down his neck.

“That’s not _why_ I--!” He tries to save himself, brow furrowed and eyes a bit wild from embarrassment. “I mean it was kinda sexy, but that wasn’t… It was just…” He takes in a breath and lets it out with a defeated (but ultimately fond) half-smile. “It was when we were driving out of New York. The way you looked, so pleased with yourself, completely carefree… It was beautiful. _You_ were beautiful. And I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life just… admiring that beauty.”

About halfway through the confession, Lance’s giggles get caught in his throat, his eyes widening with every quiet admission and every honest declaration. For Shiro to be so open about that moment, for him to have been so sure when it had taken nothing but years of failure and mistakes for Lance to get even a fraction of the way there… It seems impossible. And yet.

Surely there has to be a limit to how many tears even a Sin could cry, right?

“You fucking sap,” Lance sniffs, wiping frantically at his eyes before more tears can fall. Eventually, when it doesn’t seem to help, he just buries his entire face in his hands, voice going muffled. “How can you just say shit like that, huh?”

When Shiro shrugs, Lance can feel it like a full body jostle, forcing Lance to peak at the Sin from between his fingers. The moment Shiro catches his eye, he reaches out, gently pulling those hands away and rising open palms to his lips. Slowly, intently, he kisses away every stray tear that managed to cling to Lance’s skin.

“When it comes to you, I don’t feel the need to be so proud.”

This time, when Lance kisses him, he doesn’t quite know where it will lead. But he also decides, as Pride’s essence swirls around his, soothing and stoking Lust’s nature in the same breath, that he really _really_ doesn’t care. 

\---

It’s nearly a century after the fallout that Lance McClain meets Takashi Shirogane. And it’s roughly two and a half hours later that Lust and Pride really, truly, _finally_ find each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented on the original fic. It really brought me out of a serious slump... Like, I had all these plans to write a fic a day, maybe every couple, and then october slapped me across the face and told me to go back to bed.
> 
> But all your kind words were invigorating! I have two major Voltron AU projects in the work and a oneshot that kinda needs to be written, so I'm gonna try to ride the high of your comments and kudos for as long as I can.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Hope it was a nice addition to Lust and Pride's tale.


End file.
